I feel like the react buttons are cluttering up the UI and distracting. Maybe they should be e.g., restricted to users with 100+ karma and everyone gets only one react a day or something?
Like they are really annoying when reading articles like this one.
Yeah, I agree with this. I think they are generally decent on comments, but some users really spam them on posts. It’s on my list to improve the UI for that.
Seems like a signal-to-noise problem. Some amount seems like a useful signal, but too much is too hard to digest. Privileges based on karma make some sense but restricting it based on time (1/day/user or something) seems pretty crude, so I don’t like that idea.
Not sure if this is a good idea either, but the number of reacts allowed per post could be based on the amount of karma that user generated on comments on that post. That way, a user who’s doing too many reacts would be encouraged to just write a comment instead. That still doesn’t seem like exactly the right incentive, but I’m also not sure how I want it to work.
Maybe the ability to filter out reacts from a particular (prolific) user would suffice?
Do you have any thoughts on those UI improvement written down anywhere?
I’ll admit to being one of the users that really spams reactions on posts. I like them as a form of highlighting for review and as a form of backchannel communication. I would be much happier if people would use more reacts towards me. So I would be upset with UI modifications to restrict reacts, but fully support updates to make the UI around viewing reacts cleaner and more useful.
Part of it is the “vulnerability” where any one user can create arbitrary amounts of reacts, which I agree is cluttering and distracting. Limiting reacts per day seems reasonable (I don’t know if 1 is the right number, but it might be, I don’t recall ever react-ing more than once a day myself). Another option (more labor-intensive) would be for mods to check the statistics and talk to outliers (like @TristanTrim) who use way way more reacts than average.
[EDIT: I think issues stem from different people using reacts in different ways and having different assumptions about their use. I think I am probably using them in a less common way than other people, but I also find myself believing I am using them in a better way than other people. As such, I am trying to put in effort to communicate my POV. I would appreciate if anyone who disagrees with me would do so with a higher bandwidth signal than just pressing the “Agreement: Downvote” button. Perhaps by using some inline reacts on my comment?]
Haha! Sorry if I’m bothering anyone! ☺♡
I really like reacts and am bothered in essentially the opposite direction as Sodium in that I think reacts are a very useful backchannel communication, and see it as a minor moral failing that most users do not use them more.
I think it’s great that many reacts are based on LW ideals for discourse. I don’t know exactly how they are managed, but I think they could be even more valuable if there was some team that reviewed how people are currently using them and then improved and updated react descriptions and usage guides based on that. A descriptivist approach.
I also think a prescriptive approach would also be good. People should be suggesting concepts for reacts that they think would be valuable for communication, and people should be figuring out how to promote proper use of reacts.
I do agree that relevance may be an issue. I would like it if everyone would drop ~10 reacts while reading a post, but then, if all of them showed in the UI, it would be too noisy to make sense of easily. I think there are a few ways around this:
[EDIT: I’ve discovered on the triple dot menu it is already possible to select for inline reactions to hide all, hide downvoted, or show all. I think a plausible sane modification of this would be to make the default to hide under 2 or 3 votes and always show reactions to highlighted text. However I think some kind of more complicated scheme could be better.]
Allow users to toggle all reacts on/off. This would be easy to implement and help with the current problem of some users feeling reacts are distracting, but would not help if more people react more.
Change opacity of reacts based on the sum of user karma, so people are not distracted by the opinions of relatively unknown people like myself, unless lots of other people agree.
Make react visibility “subscription” based, so you would only see the reactions of people you are subscribed to.
React “subscription” could be modified for your own posts if you want to see all the reactions to what you have posted but you only want to see particularly relevant reactions while reading other peoples posts.
React “subscription” could be modified with a “karma threshold” so you also see reactions by any user with sufficient karma.
If a users reacts are consistently downvoted, this could be flagged for mods, or allow reporting users for spamming reacts in a way that does not seem to support discourse.
Another issue, I don’t know if this is the case or not, but if each react on your comment or post shows up as it’s own entry in the notifications list, then that would be annoying because it would make it hard to see the more important notifications. So reacts should probably be batched like karma is somehow. (And really, I think a bunch of improvements could be made to the notifications UI.)
All that said, I strongly oppose restricting who can use reacts and how many reacts they can use. Rather, more people should be encouraged to use more reacts more competently and the UI for viewing / ignoring reacts should be improved.
I use the “typo” reaction and hope it is useful for authors, but I don’t ever go back to remove it if the typo has been corrected. I’m not even sure what happens in that case.
I feel like the react buttons are cluttering up the UI and distracting. Maybe they should be e.g., restricted to users with 100+ karma and everyone gets only one react a day or something?
Like they are really annoying when reading articles like this one.
Yeah, I agree with this. I think they are generally decent on comments, but some users really spam them on posts. It’s on my list to improve the UI for that.
Seems like a signal-to-noise problem. Some amount seems like a useful signal, but too much is too hard to digest. Privileges based on karma make some sense but restricting it based on time (1/day/user or something) seems pretty crude, so I don’t like that idea.
Not sure if this is a good idea either, but the number of reacts allowed per post could be based on the amount of karma that user generated on comments on that post. That way, a user who’s doing too many reacts would be encouraged to just write a comment instead. That still doesn’t seem like exactly the right incentive, but I’m also not sure how I want it to work.
Maybe the ability to filter out reacts from a particular (prolific) user would suffice?
Yeah I would like to mute some users site-wide so that I never see reacts from them & their comments are hidden by default....
Do you have any thoughts on those UI improvement written down anywhere?
I’ll admit to being one of the users that really spams reactions on posts. I like them as a form of highlighting for review and as a form of backchannel communication. I would be much happier if people would use more reacts towards me. So I would be upset with UI modifications to restrict reacts, but fully support updates to make the UI around viewing reacts cleaner and more useful.
I wrote a longer comment with some feature suggestions. If you have time it would be nice to hear your thoughts.
Part of it is the “vulnerability” where any one user can create arbitrary amounts of reacts, which I agree is cluttering and distracting. Limiting reacts per day seems reasonable (I don’t know if 1 is the right number, but it might be, I don’t recall ever react-ing more than once a day myself). Another option (more labor-intensive) would be for mods to check the statistics and talk to outliers (like @TristanTrim) who use way way more reacts than average.
[EDIT: I think issues stem from different people using reacts in different ways and having different assumptions about their use. I think I am probably using them in a less common way than other people, but I also find myself believing I am using them in a better way than other people. As such, I am trying to put in effort to communicate my POV. I would appreciate if anyone who disagrees with me would do so with a higher bandwidth signal than just pressing the “Agreement: Downvote” button. Perhaps by using some inline reacts on my comment?]
Haha! Sorry if I’m bothering anyone! ☺♡
I really like reacts and am bothered in essentially the opposite direction as Sodium in that I think reacts are a very useful backchannel communication, and see it as a minor moral failing that most users do not use them more.
I think it’s great that many reacts are based on LW ideals for discourse. I don’t know exactly how they are managed, but I think they could be even more valuable if there was some team that reviewed how people are currently using them and then improved and updated react descriptions and usage guides based on that. A descriptivist approach.
I also think a prescriptive approach would also be good. People should be suggesting concepts for reacts that they think would be valuable for communication, and people should be figuring out how to promote proper use of reacts.
I do agree that relevance may be an issue. I would like it if everyone would drop ~10 reacts while reading a post, but then, if all of them showed in the UI, it would be too noisy to make sense of easily. I think there are a few ways around this:
[EDIT: I’ve discovered on the triple dot menu it is already possible to select for inline reactions to hide all, hide downvoted, or show all. I think a plausible sane modification of this would be to make the default to hide under 2 or 3 votes and always show reactions to highlighted text. However I think some kind of more complicated scheme could be better.]
Allow users to toggle all reacts on/off. This would be easy to implement and help with the current problem of some users feeling reacts are distracting, but would not help if more people react more.
Change opacity of reacts based on the sum of user karma, so people are not distracted by the opinions of relatively unknown people like myself, unless lots of other people agree.
Make react visibility “subscription” based, so you would only see the reactions of people you are subscribed to.
React “subscription” could be modified for your own posts if you want to see all the reactions to what you have posted but you only want to see particularly relevant reactions while reading other peoples posts.
React “subscription” could be modified with a “karma threshold” so you also see reactions by any user with sufficient karma.
If a users reacts are consistently downvoted, this could be flagged for mods, or allow reporting users for spamming reacts in a way that does not seem to support discourse.
Another issue, I don’t know if this is the case or not, but if each react on your comment or post shows up as it’s own entry in the notifications list, then that would be annoying because it would make it hard to see the more important notifications. So reacts should probably be batched like karma is somehow. (And really, I think a bunch of improvements could be made to the notifications UI.)
All that said, I strongly oppose restricting who can use reacts and how many reacts they can use. Rather, more people should be encouraged to use more reacts more competently and the UI for viewing / ignoring reacts should be improved.
My two cents, I’m happy with the amount of reacts I usually see and would probably enjoy about 20% more.
Thank you for chipping in your two cents!
I use the “typo” reaction and hope it is useful for authors, but I don’t ever go back to remove it if the typo has been corrected. I’m not even sure what happens in that case.
We recently made it so that authors can remove typo reacts themselves. It’s still a bit annoying, but it’s less annoying than before!